Women of Valor

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Anna Sokolow - Radical Dance - Jewish Women and Modern Dance

As modern dance developed in the early 20th century, Jewish
women were disproportionately represented among the new art
form's students, teachers, performers and audience members.
Many of these women grew up amidst the working-class Jewish
immigrant communities of New York's Lower East Side.
Emerging from a culture shaped by Jewish unions, socialist
movements, and other left-wing social and political concerns,
they were particularly attracted to the radical dance movement
of the 1930s.

Like Sokolow, many of these Jewish women "radical
dancers" were first exposed to dance in the settlement
houses that arose to serve the needs of large immigrant
populations. The Henry Street Settlement House and the
Neighborhood Playhouse, especially, served as conduits for
Jewish women into the classes and companies of Martha Graham,
Doris Humphrey and other leading modern dancers. Many of these
young women faced opposition from friends and family, who often
assumed that all dancers—especially female ones—were of loose
moral character.

Jewish women also struggled against anti-semitism within the
modern dance movement. Seeing their goal as the creation of a
uniquely American art form, many of the pioneering modern
dancers shied away from Jewish dancers, whom they considered
not fully American. Seeking to exclude Jews, Ruth St. Denis,
co-founder of the first important modern dance group Denishawn,
even stipulated that 90% of her dancers be Anglo-Saxon. Yet
despite the hurdles, Jewish women such as Helen Becker (known
as Tamiris), Sophie Maslow, and Pearl Lang joined Sokolow among
the best-known modern dancers of the day.